Wilee's girlfriend (Dania Ramirez) keeps in contact with him while he's pursued by a crazy police officer.

Wilee's girlfriend (Dania Ramirez) keeps in contact with him while he's pursued by a crazy police officer.

Photo: Sarah Shatz

'Premium Rush': Trying to kill the messenger

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Quads, calves and sweat glands get a workout in the bike-messenger-thriller "Premium Rush," but the body part that takes the biggest beating is, by far, the adrenal system. Stress-reaction hormones just about splatter the pavement.

Like the lithe and maligned carriers weaving their way through Big Apple traffic, this is a thin, brash, sinewy thing built entirely for speed. Its plot is basic: Bike messenger Wilee, as in Wile E. Coyote (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), picks up an envelope at Columbia University and gets chased around Manhattan by a bonkers cop named Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon). The envelope contains a slip of paper worth $50,000. The cop has a gambling problem, an impulse-control problem and a problem with bike-riding punks who call him the d-word.

Directed by David Koepp ("Ghost Town"), the film boasts some throwback touches: It was shot on good old celluloid, and an early chase scene under an el-train overpass evokes "The French Connection" (never mind there's no el in Manhattan). But it's not old-fangled. Check out the maps, arrows and other buzzy graphics, which point Wilee's course as he bombs from one end of the island to another.

Check out the whiplash hypothetical scenarios that unfold at various intersections as Wilee, his eyes quirked in close-up, decides in a split second whether to peel to the right (nope, he'd hit a baby), peel to the left (nope, a dude would get squished by a UPS truck) or find some alternate crazy route kinked with turns (yep, he squeaks through with his life intact).

And check out this new New York - still a knotty urban madhouse but cleaner, shinier, sunnier, more eco-hip, complete with a bike-patrol police officer who tears after Wilee in mounting frustration. And Monday himself isn't corrupt in the usual sense; for once, there isn't some dirtbag conspiracy plaguing New York's finest. The guy is acting alone.

More Information

'Premium Rush'

Rated PG-13: for some violence, intense action sequences and language

Running time: 91 minutes

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What makes this whole thing work is, first of all, Wilee's fixed-gear ride, an elegant brakeless machine. "Brakes are death," he explains.

So the pedals never stop, and neither does the movie: The screenplay (by Koepp and John Kamp) is as brakeless as the bicycle. Whole swaths of dialogue occur midroute, as Wilee yaks it up via headset with his girlfriend (Dania Ramirez) and rival (Wolé Parks), both of them messengers, too.

Gordon-Levitt and Shannon are perfectly cast. Who better to play a smart, wiry hero and the nutcase in hot pursuit? Shannon's delectable weirdness, so often exploited for its creep factor or, more rarely, its fragile pathos ("Take Shelter"), here assumes a breezy comic zip that lightens the proceedings. Despite his unhinged behavior, he isn't the film's primary menace. More danger lurks in yellow cabs and car doors.

Which reminds me. Wilee and his colleagues may be cowboys and scofflaws - they may plow through lights and traumatize pedestrians - but, hey, at least they wear helmets. Among all other body parts, the bike-messenger noggin survives unscathed.